Resources
This 2007 animation from YouTube features a Digambara monk singing the fundamental Jain sacred formulas. The second is the Namaskāra-mantra, also called the Navkār-mantra or Namokār-mantra. A very old mantra in Prakrit, it can be sung to various melodies. It is chanted daily to the ‘five types of beings worthy of worship’ or Supreme Beings’:
- enlightened teachers – Arhats or Jinas
- liberated souls – siddhas
- mendicant leaders – ācāryas
- teachers – upādhyāyas
- mendicants – sādhus.
Then comes a short mantra about the emptiness of the world of rebirths and the celebration of the ‘four auspicious things’ or ‘four refuges’:
- Arhat
- siddha
- monks
- law – dharma.